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Madhav Chavan wins education 'Nobel prize'

13 Nov 2012

The National Literacy Trust would like to congratulate Madhav Chavan, this year's winner of one of the biggest awards in international education.

Dr Chavan has won the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Prize, which has been likened to a ‘Nobel prize for education’. The award, announced at the WISE summit in Qatar, recognises his work in the slums of Mumbai and the low-cost education support he has provided to millions of impoverished families in India.

Dr Chavan said:

Much more remains to be done.

The international award, which comes with a prize of $500,000 (£314,000), recognises Dr Chavan's efforts to provide lessons in literacy and numeracy for disadvantaged children and adults in India.

Working with UNICEFand the city authorities, Dr Chavan developed an innovative system for providing lessons for large numbers of people at low cost. His charity, Pratham, ran lessons in temples and offices and recruited volunteers from the local community. This work expanded to other cities and states until Pratham became the largest non-governmental education provider for deprived children in India.

As well as improving the quantity of education, Dr Chavan also made efforts to improve the quality. He set up a project to address the problem of children who were in school but still had low levels of literacy.

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